


Mama's Friend

by LWhoScribbles



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Angst, Death, Grief/Mourning, Headcanon, Heartbreak, Hospital, Spoilerish, baby carrie, baby julie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29410203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LWhoScribbles/pseuds/LWhoScribbles
Summary: Cross posting from my tumblr post a million months ago about Bobby/Trevor and thoughts on  the maybe of how things came to be where we found them.
Kudos: 10





	Mama's Friend

**Author's Note:**

> I keep thinking about the fact that when Julie mentions Trevor Wilson, it’s just like that; by his artist name and in full, distant in the way you would say any celebrity’s name, this person you easily recognize, but don’t actually know. And she does it this way despite having met him as he’s her former friend’s dad and she apparently talked music with him once upon a time. So even if her mom had any recollection that she met him long before he was her kid’s friend’s dad and a famous musician, she clearly didn’t say anything. Julie only knows him in this distant way. But then I was thinking about how the house and the studio don’t seem to have belonged to any of the rest of the guys, so I thought maybe it had been Bobby’s place, so did Mama Rose know or recognize any of the stuff left behind when they bought the house??   
> And then this happened and I made myself sad, so now here it is:

So we know Mama Rose was there working at the Orpheum that night. She met the guys. So she would have been there as this goofball kept trying to chat with her between checking and rechecking the stage, his sound, his hair. She would have been there when the goofball starts getting less goofy and starts checking the time more and then making a show of getting pissed when his bandmates aren’t back yet. But he’s saying stuff like,

“Luke would rather die than miss call time,”

Or

“Alex wouldn’t let the other guys get distracted. Like, he might take a sec to puke in an alley, but he’d get everyone here,”

Or

“Reggie probably went back to get me a street-dog. He’s always doing shit like that.”

Rose is there when he looks at the time, swears, and jogs out to go look for them.

She’s there when he comes back alone looking like he doesn’t know where the ground went.

Bobby can’t go on stage without his friends. He can’t.

What happened?

He won’t say.

Rose tells her coworker he should probably get the house manager. She and a local photographer help Bobby get the band’s gear off the stage. They haul it out to her van, because Alex had the keys to the rental van. Fuck, what’s he gonna tell the rental place?

She can’t leave him like this. She only just met these guys, but she knows if something ever happened to her band, her sister—she leaves him in the passenger seat and runs in to tell her boss she’s gotta go. She’s going to get this kid home.

When she comes back, he’s got his face in his hands.

“Hey, where do you live?”

Bobby shakes his head, “No, they’re gonna be in the hospital. The girl at the hotdog place said three guys got taken to the hospital.”

Rose thinks for a minute. Where was the closest hospital? She takes him there.

But they won’t tell him anything.

“Those are my brothers!” he pleads, and it’s not a lie. He’s used to telling stupid little lies to get his way, but this isn’t one of them.

But all the nurse at the front desk sees is a punk kid trying to get in to a set of boys who look nothing like him and are already dead, anyway. Maybe the nurse has a moment of pity, because clearly they’re important to this kid, they’re probably his friends, but she can only release information to next of kin. That’s just the way it is.

An officer filling out paperwork nearby hears all this. Someone at the dodgy hotdog stand recognized Luke from the missing poster on the wall and told the paramedic. The paramedic asked the front desk to call the police upon arrival. And here’s this officer who has to tell Luke’s parents they think they found their boy. He asks to speak with Bobby for a minute.

Rose watches anxiously from the side. Cops aren’t a good sign. She asks the nurse at the desk if she can borrow the phone. She calls home to tell her sister she doesn’t know when she’ll be home.

‘Are you okay? Do I need to come get you? Should I get Mom and Dad?’

No, no, she’s fine. Cover for her. She’ll explain everything later.

She watches Bobby talk, animated, to the officer, then listening very still, watches the officer put a hand on Bobby’s shoulder, watches Bobby crumple.

“Listen, cariña, te amo, I gotta go.” And she hangs up.

She drives Bobby home. She helps him get the gear into the garage, their studio. She checks her watch and wonders what her sister will tell their parents. Sunset Curve would have been on stage already.

Bobby sits on the couch and starts talking. He talks about how they busted their asses to get there. How Luke’s music was made of gold. He talks about meeting the guys. He talks about the fights they had, the crap they helped each other do and through. Luke had been crashing on this couch. He was over all the time, anyway, so it’s not like Bobby’s parents noticed the difference.

Rose sat and listened until the sun came up, peaking through the tiny windows in the back of the garage, her eyes stinging as much from heartbreak for this stranger and his friends as exhaustion.

When he finally stopped, she sat with him a little longer. He was just a kid. They were all just kids. She wanted desperately to be home then, to see her sister, her parents, to hug her bandmates, to sing.

“Bobby,” she says, “you gotta keep playing. Whatever happens, you gotta keep making music for them, for you.”

He looks at her, like he’s looking for God or a miracle or a lie to be revealed in her face, and he shakes his head slowly, his eyes red. He doesn’t even seem to know what he’s saying no to, not any more than Rose does.

“No, mira, Bobby, you have to. You can do it.”

Rose squeezes his hand and promises to come by again, and then she goes home.

She keeps her promise. She’s there sometimes as he sorts through all the stuff left behind in the studio and he tells her about the funerals, about how he couldn’t look any of his friends’ parents in the eye.

She pushes him to practice with her and her band sometimes.

He starts coming to her gigs, too.

The photographer from that night is usually there, too. He’s a fan, he says, laughing.

They’re friends.

Bobby thinks he loves her.

But she’s a little bit older. And she and the photographer can’t keep their eyes off each other.

Rose is there when Bobby says he wants to play Luke’s music.

“That’s great!” she says. She’s really happy for him.

She’s in the crowd with Ray, the photographer, her friend, when Bobby gets on stage and the audience loves the songs. She smiles when he lights up, and for a minute, he’s that goofball she met the first night.

She keeps going to his gigs, the open mics, he comes to less of her band practices, but she’s spending more time with Ray, and Bobby still goes to her shows.

And then one night she’s late, but she gets there just in time to hear him say, “I wrote this next song…” and she recognizes it, but it’s not his. She knows he didn’t write that song, but he just told at least hundred people that it was his.

When he gets off stage, she’s waiting for him.

“You made it!” he says, and he looks so genuinely pleased to see her, but he’s also still grinning a bit like a used car salesman she met once that called her ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey’ and ‘babe’ and asked if she’d like to come back with her boyfriend to help her pick a good car.

“Bobby, what did you just do?” she doesn’t smile back.

He looks confused, but takes her arm to talk to her on the side where it’s more private. She doesn’t think, she just yanks out of his hand. “How could you do that? How could you do that to them?”

“Rose,” he’s shocked and not grinning anymore, she’s broken his performance high. “Rose, they’re dead. They can’t use these anymore.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Do you hear yourself? They can’t use—this is stealing! You are stealing! From your friends! Your brothers!”

“They would want me to make it big! I’m taking them with me like this!”

“You’re full of shit, Bobby. Do what you want.”

And Rose leaves. She doesn’t answer when he calls her house. Ray reluctantly tells her Bobby is still passing off the music as his own when she finds out he was hired for one of his gigs.

Her band separates to go to university or work or take care of personal problems.

Bobby drops by her usual practice space to apologize. He misses her. He shows up just in time to hear Ray propose. He doesn’t stay to hear her say yes.

A few years later Bobby, now Trevor, runs into Ray at a concert. Ray’s been hired to get shots of a Battle of the Bands. Trevor’s doing well and is there to support a friend in the competition. They chat and Ray mentions how Rose wants to find a house for them, that she wants their future kids to have a great place to play and learn music.

It’s a gut-check for Bobby, but he smiles and he swallows, and he tells Ray his parents are trying to sell their house to move now that they’re retiring. He can probably get them to bring the price down.

Ray is ecstatic and he says he knows Rose loved that place, too. He’ll talk to her.

She spoke to him politely when they bought the house from his parents. Bobby quietly paid his parents the difference after Rose and Ray paid a low price they couldn’t believe. Rose helped him when she didn’t even know him. This is what he could do for her.

Years again later still, Julie comes barreling into the studio with a little girl in a sparkly dress. “Mamá, I made a new friend! Mom! Look, meet my new friend!”

Rose grins and sets her pencil down.

“I’m Carrie and Trevor Wilson is my daddy,” Julie’s new friend says proudly, holding out her hand. Rose blinks, but doesn’t falter. She shakes the little girl’s hand as her daughter beams at her.

“Mom, can we show her our songs?“


End file.
